Foreign policy likely to make US relations the most important

Closer relations with America have become a fact of life but engagement with Asia and other regions need not suffer, writes Tony Parkinson.

Australia is not part of Asia. It is not, and will never be, the 51st of the American states.

Both are self-evident realities. Yet each time a government in Canberra shifts the emphasis of its diplomacy from one side of the Pacific to the other, it tends to generate feverish debates over what this means for Australia's identity in the world.

The Howard Government is to release its foreign policy white paper, Advancing the National Interest, in October. After a turbulent five years since the last such document - encompassing the Asian economic crisis, East Timor, the September 11 attacks on America, and the war on terrorism - it makes sense for policy makers to review how best the nation should adapt to the challenges thrown up by dramatic changes in the international landscape.

The centrepiece of this new document is expected to be an explicit acknowledgment that the United States has emerged as Australia's single most important bilateral relationship.

Predictably, this has provoked a frenzy, with the government accused of turning its back on a 30-year strategy of engagement with Asia.");document.write("

advertisement

");
}
}
// -->

Labor was quick to take up this theme. Borrowing from some of the more excitable headline writers, the ALP's foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, branded the white paper a "dump Asia" philosophy, and warned it risked incalculable damage to Australia's long-term strategic and economic interests.

Sadly, we are on the threshold of another debate conducted almost entirely in caricature: Asia or Bust versus All the Way With Whoever Occupies the Oval Office.

It is a false dichotomy. With imaginative and energetic diplomacy - and a more self-assured view of Australia's place in the world - why should it become a zero sum game?

No less than 57 per cent of Australia's trade occurs with East Asia, and Japan remains our biggest export market. But as much as the region provides critical markets for mineral, energy and farm exports, the fast-moving global economy of the 21st century demands that Australia extend its repertoire beyond "rocks and crops".

Connecting Australian business to the sinews of the powerhouse US economy, with its massive pools of capital and world leadership in high-tech industries and services, is as much an imperative as maintaining a reputation as a reliable supplier of high-quality food and competitively priced mineral exports to major markets in East Asia.

Combined with heightened defence and security cooperation, with the ANZUS alliance invoked for the first time in 50 years, closer relations with the US have become a fact of life.

Does this necessarily mean relegating East Asia from pride of place in Australia's diplomacy?

Japan and Korea are crucial long-term partners in commerce and, increasingly, on security.

China's rapid ascent as a global power means it will inevitably loom large in our priorities.

Although South-East Asia's recovery from the 1997 economic crisis has been patchy, the 10 members of ASEAN represent a substantial market of 500 million people, and will always be in the highest tier of Australia's strategic concerns.

Where the Howard Government is often accused of neglect is on questions of symbolism.

The Prime Minister has met regularly with the leaders of China and Japan. But official visits to other regional capitals have been rare.

It may be form rather than substance but perceptions matter.

That said, Australia's engagement with the region need not always occur at a pace and rhythm dictated by others. If the latter half of the 1990s proved anything, it is that Australia is more robust, and more capable of surviving in the helter-skelter of the global economy, than many in the region (or at home) thought possible.

Near-obsessive fears of being left adrift in the slipstream of the rampant tiger economies as "the poor white trash of Asia" have proved illusory.

The professionals driving our diplomacy believe Australia should transcend its traditional fears of isolation, and run a confident and sophisticated foreign policy of across-the-board engagement, without having to make phoney choices between Asia, the West or the rest.